Universal Display reported its financial results for Q3 2018. Revenues increased 26% from last year, to reach $77.6 million (material sales increased 9% to $51.2 million). Net income was $22.8 million (up from $13.5 million in Q3 2017).
UDC lowered its 2018 revenue guidance to $240-250 million. Even though the market has picked up in the quarter for its major customers (SDC and LGD), UDC's revenues and guidance disappointed investors.
Samsung Display is developing hybrid QD-OLED TV technology, and according to estimates, the company aims to begin trial production in 2019. It is also estimated that Samsung has several challenges to overcome, but according to new reports from Digitimes, Samsung is aiming to start installing equipment for the new fab as early as December 2018.
The new fab will begin operation in the second half of 2019 - pilot production at first which will be expanded to full scale mass production. The new fab will be built in Samsung's L8 LCD production line in Asan, and will take over one of the two lines currently in operation at the fab. Samsung's initial production capacity will be around 25,000 monthly G8 substrates.
DSCC estimates that Samsung will begin pilot production of QD-OLEDs in 2019, with a capacity of 5,000 monthly 8.5-Gen substrates. If this is successful, Samsung will double the capacity in 2020 and add a further 30,000 yearly substrates in 2021 and again in 2022. Material revenues for Samsung's QD-OLED TVs will reach $56 million in 2022.
DSCC admits, though, that as Samsung faces several technical challenges before it could launch commercial QD-OLED TVs, its forecast could be way off - there's a good chance that SDC will cancel the project, or it could increase capacity at a much faster rate than DSCC estimates and even scale-up production to 10.5-Gen.
Kyulux announced that it has signed joint-development agreements (JDAs) with both LG Display and Samsung Display. The LGD agreement was signed in January 2018 while the SDC one was recently signed. Both agreements focus on deep blue Hyperfluoresence / TADF emitters.
Kyulux hopes that by collaborating with the two leading OLED producers, it will be able to accelerate its material development - and it aims to have commercial red, green and blue HF/TADF emitters ready by mid 2019.
Universal Display reported its financial results for Q2 2018 - with revenues of $56.1 million and a net profit of $10.8 million (without the impact of UDC's new accounting system, the revenues would have been $73.6 million and the net income $25.1 million).
UDC says that the first quarter was the bottom for material shipments for 2018, in Q2 materials sales improved and the company believes that the second half of 2018 will see more growth as it anticipates new OLED smartphones from leading brands - including Apple, Google, Samsung and more. UDC estimates that for 2019, the install base of OLED capacity by meters will increase by around 50% compared to 2017.
German TADF developer Cynora presented its latest blue TADF material in May 2018 - with a CIEy of 0.14, EQE of 20% and a lifetime of 20 hours LT97 at 700 nits. Cynora expects to have blue material in the mass production by 2020.
Cynora's Chief Marketing Offer, Dr. Andreas Haldi was kind enough to answer a few questions we had regarding TADF emitters, the differences between next-generation emitter technologies, lifetime, color points and more.
Kyulux announced that it has developed a new blue Hyperfluoresence/TADF OLED emitter. Kyulux managed to extend the lifetime of the material and reached 100 hours at LT95 (@ 750 cd/m2) while maintaining a high EQE of 26% - 22% at 1,000 cd/m2. The emission wavelength is 470 nm.
Kyulux says that its blue Hyperfluorescence emitter is the world’s top performing material at the moment. Kyulux now aims to work together with OLED panel makers to improve the systems further by optimizing the device structure and the rest of the OLED stack in pilot production lines.
In February 2018 it was first reported that Samsung Display is developing TV panels based on hybrid quantum-dots and OLED architecture (QD-OLED). Samsung later confirmed it is developing such technology, but with no immediate plans to commercialize it.
ETNews now reports that Samsung is now working to establish a pilot 8-Gen line for QD-OLED production. ETNews says that Samsung is collaborating with both Canon Tokki and Kateeva to develop the production equipment - apparently the OLED layers will be evaporated using Canon's machines while the QD filters will be deposited using ink-jet printing equipment made by Kateeva. Samsung aims to finalize the production line by the second half of 2019.
Thermal activation sensitized fluorescence, or TASF, is a new type of TADF OLED emitter material developed at China's Tsinghua University. During SID Displayweek, Visionox demonstrated the first TASF prototype display.
We do not have a lot of information on this new emitter technology, except what Visionox provided at the conference: a sky-blue color (468 nm, CIE: 0.153, 0.201), a luminous efficiency of 26.6 cd/A and an external quantum efficiency of over 17%. The brightness of this OLED PMOLED display was 800 nits.
Researchers from Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) and lighting expert Prof. George C. Brainard (one of the principle investigators of the SSL program for the International Space Station) have teamed up for a public call for the adoption of healthier lights.
The researchers aim to collaboration to accelerate the development of healthier lights, which are connected to a range of health problems, including breast and prostate cancers. NTHU's blue-light free candle-light OLEDs may prove to be a good solution to night time lighting.